The 2014 FIFA World Cup, the 20th World Cup, is an international men’s football tournament that will take place in Brazil from 12 June to 13 July 2014. The action starts tomorrow in Sao Paulo, Brazil, Thursday, June 12, at 4 p.m. ET, with Brazil taking on Croatia at Arena Corinthians.

Twelve venues (seven new and five renovated) in twelve cities were selected for the tournament. The BBC and ESPN have venue tours.

Disney and Univision hold the U.S. broadcast rights. It will be carried by ESPN, ESPN Deportes, and ESPN Radio; Univision and Univision Deportes; and on the Fútbol de Primera radio network in the United States. CBC, Radio-Canada and TSN Radio will carry it in Canada.

Globo – the largest broadcasting group in Brazil – is working with both Sony and FIFA to showcase Ultra HD 4K technology, reports Bloomberg. The broadcaster is setting up 65in screens locally to broadcast the three matches being covered by Sony and FIFA in 4K, which includes the final and two other knockout games.

In another test, on May 5, Elemental Technologies, a supplier of software-defined video solutions for multiscreen content delivery, supplied the Vienna State Opera with “the world’s first” live 4K production in using HEVC compression delivered via MPEG-DASH over the public Internet.

In preparation for the games regulating telecom agency Anatel mandated that host cities with more than 500,000 people must support universal 4G coverage by May 31, 2014. Telecom operators have since installed 164 miles of fiber in the stadiums, 3,700 antennas for 2G, 3G, and 4G access, and 1,014 WiFi antennas, at a cost of US$226 million.